Saturday, October 12, 2024

Links - 12th October 2024 (2 - General Wokeness)

Adam Pankratz: Things are so dire for the left, even B.C.'s NDP wants to scrap the carbon tax - "While some may crow about the desultory situation of American-style politics, B.C.’s election is unlikely to be much better as the NDP and Eby do their best to convince British Columbians that John Rustad is Donald Trump. It’s unlikely to work. One of the first salvos launched by the NDP was against B.C. Conservative campaign manager Angelo Isidorou. Several NDP affiliated accounts and then NDP ministers tweeted a photo of Isidorou flashing what they alleged was a white nationalist symbol. It was indeed unfortunate for them that Isidorou’s family were survivors of the Armenian genocide and he is unlikely to support white supremacist policies for deeply held personal reasons, as he noted in response on X. Isidorou is in fact exactly the type of person the NDP would normally exult: a member of an immigrant family, exposed to violence elsewhere, who came to Canada, found success and made it a better place. Ah, but Isidorou is conservative and so the victim narrative doesn’t apply to him and into the white supremacy bucket he must be tossed. The charge of racism levied at the B.C. Conservatives is an odd choice for Eby and the NDP in more ways than just its generally insulting nature. For it is not the Conservatives, but the NDP who ejected a woman of colour, Anjalina Appadurai , from their leadership race when they realized Eby might lose. It is also the NDP who banished cabinet minister Selina Robinson from the party when she called them out for not supporting the Jewish community in the wake of the October 7 attacks. The NDP and Eby should think twice before tossing allegations of racism or misogyny the B.C. Conservatives’ way. When not flinging the word “racist” around willy-nilly, the NDP have decided to just lie about Rustad’s positions. They have begun to spread the rumour that Rustad would decrease access to abortion and claim Rustad is putting abortion on the ballot “ just like it is in the United States .” This is not the case and Rustad responded as such immediately . In Canada, you know a party is in trouble if abortion comes out as a scare tactic. That the B.C. NDP is using it so early is indicative they know there is a problem in their message and campaign. Perhaps the only indication a party like the NDP knows they are in uniquely deep trouble is when they flip flop on core policies and adopt those of sworn enemies. Thursday, Eby did just that indicating he would axe the carbon tax if the federal government removed it as a requirement for provinces . This comes after calling Rustad a climate change denier and years of insistence the NDP would never abandon a carbon tax. The solution to NDP woes, however, is not to paint the mild-mannered Rustad as a Trumpian figure of chaos. A better tactic might be to address hospital closures on long weekends , drug overdose deaths and B.C.’s skyrocketing deficit , which will come in at $9 billion this year. That’s $4 billion higher than the previous record of $5 billion set during Covid. This is the result of a government that ditched John Horgan’s pragmatism for Eby’s activism. Voters are also unlikely to swap back to a party now painting itself as opposed to a carbon tax and will likely give Conservatives credit for its death. David Eby and the B.C. NDP were handed the reins to a solid majority by Horgan when he left office. They decided that activist government, extreme positions and going all in on identity politics was the path forward"

Renu Bakshi: Colour me confused. B.C.'s NDP government woke-washed us - "While I find the premise of race-based hiring cringeworthy – an opinion shared by many who prefer to succeed on merit and know how such policies backfire and cause harm – many supporters buy the NDP’s commitment to EDI. It's a farce... Today, the sunshine list shows EDI in the executive ranks of B.C.’s public sector remains a fiction. As the provincial election campaign rages, “racialized” New Democrats, like Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon and Richmond-Queensborough MLA Aman Singh, spin facts and squawk on social media that the Conservative Party of B.C. plays “ Trump-style politics “– meaning, too white. Um … can we discuss the NDP’s dirty family secret? The party’s own policies discriminate by reducing people to their skin color and gender – a divisive issue within their own group – and their entire ‘woke’ premise is a fallacy sold to the mob to win votes. The NDP’s record speaks for itself. The party adopted an equity mandate in 2011 requiring its retiring male MLAs be replaced by a female or someone belonging to other “equity seeking” groups. Yet in 2020, the party ignored an Indigenous woman’s nomination application in favour of supporting a white man in a northern riding. In 2021, the NDP disqualified a South-Asian woman from the leadership race, claiming that the candidate had engaged in “improper co-ordination with third-party environmental groups and fraudulent memberships.” This made way for Eby to be declared leader. However, some political experts have referred to the win as “tainted.” And, in 2022, a Jewish minister felt pushed to resign from cabinet following her political position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All women. All belonging to diverse groups. All duped by the NDP. So, while the righteous left flogs identity politics, fuels race wars, and force-feeds EDI on everyone – mounting evidence proves they are disingenuous and hypocritical with their own agenda. Sunshine lists don’t lie."

Canada's progressive experiment has failed - "B.C. Premier David Eby announced that he would consider scrapping the provincial consumer carbon tax if Ottawa made it possible. This comes less than a year after he declared that British Columbia would be the last stand of Canada’s carbon taxes, come hell or high water, and follows his federal counterpart, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, signalling that he will oppose the current version of the tax. In 2019, many tut-tutting commentators were adamant that right-of-centre leaders needed to embrace the carbon tax to be electable. So much can change in five years. Last week, Eby even broached the possibility of introducing involuntary care for those suffering from mental health disorders, after a knife-wielding lunatic murdered a man and cut off another man’s hand in Vancouver. Disastrous criminal justice reforms, imposed on the people of Canada by the Liberal government in Ottawa, have resulted in some of the worst years of violent crime in this country in nearly two decades. And an open-door immigration policy has worsened an already critical housing situation that dashed the hopes of middle-class Canadians who want to own homes. Addictions policies overseen by progressive governments have resulted in some of the most harrowing tragedies imaginable. A 13-year-old girl in Abbotsford, B.C., became addicted to drugs while suffering from mental health issues. When her parents sought to keep her monitored and supervised while they looked into treatment options, they were told by a government agency that their teenage daughter was legally allowed to make her own decisions. Their daughter was also supplied with drug paraphernalia, as part of the B.C. government’s policy of “harm reduction.” The 13-year-old ended up dying in a homeless camp of a suspected drug overdose. Within hours of the news breaking, B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad put out a statement promising to bring in involuntary care for those who need it. Eby will never go as far as what Rustad is proposing on addictions and mental health policy reforms, because harm reduction militants are the ones canvassing for his party and helping it on the ground in the provincial election... At the federal level, there appears to be growing acceptance that the fall of the Liberal government is all but inevitable. No less than five chiefs of staff left the party this month, as did the party’s national campaign director. Competent communications staff also seem to be in short supply. Earlier this week, Nova Scotia Liberal MP Jaime Battiste insisted that his fellow Atlantic Canadians were progressive, “kind of meat and potatoes, fisheries, EI kind of folks.” This is the kind of statement that only a Conservative plant or someone who deserves to lose their job would make. Battiste has since narrowed it down by attempting to explain away his remarks instead of simply apologizing and leaving it at that. Refusing to admit mistakes is a tendency shared by most progressives in Canada right now. At least the B.C. NDP are running even with the B.C. Conservatives in the polls, but federally, the Liberals have not been this unpopular since 2011 and nobody should be surprised as to the reasons why. Many of the problems Canada currently faces — including addictions, irresponsible mass-immigration and the carbon tax — are of the Liberals’ own making. Other issues like the housing crisis and inflation have gotten worse on their watch, and that too constitutes a failure. The B.C. NDP cannot run on their record in government. If they do, they can only boast of carbon taxes they are now backing away from, an affordability crisis they have not solved and an addictions policy regime that has led to teenagers dying in tent cities. While David Eby has shown a willingness to abandon some of the policies he once championed, the Liberals seem determined to double down on nearly everything in what may be their last year in office for a long time. What is obvious to all is that this era of progressivism has changed Canada, but not for the better. When Conservatives last came to power federally in 2006, it was because Canadians were sick of the sleaze after 13 years of Liberal governments and the Conservatives seemed like a moderate alternative. Now, more Canadians than ever appear primed to elect a Conservative government with a mandate to tear it all down and start anew — and who can blame them? In B.C., the NDP have desperately resorted to fear-mongering over non-existent issues like abortion, or comparing John Rustad to Donald Trump. One of their favourite slogans is that British Columbians won’t be going “backwards” from the NDP’s progressive regime. When someone grabs you by the arm and yanks you into a pile of feces or a bed of nails, it is only natural to leap backwards in revulsion or pain and choose a new direction."

Adam Zivo: Sorry B.C. NDP, but the Tories aren't white supremacists - "Canadian progressives have a tendency to lob specious accusations of racism whenever other political talking points have been exhausted, regardless if minority communities actually agree with them . This long-standing habit is now playing out again in B.C., where Premier David Eby and his NDP government are importing American-style culture wars to distract from their own policy failures. With an election just weeks away, the B.C. NDP and their allies are claiming that the B.C. Conservatives are white supremacists, which is simply partisan nonsense. Not only do both parties have an equally diverse roster of candidates, recent polling data suggests that non-white voters actually prefer the Conservatives over the current government. Two weeks ago, Government House Leader Ravi Kahlon shared a post on X insinuating that Angelo Isidorou, campaign manager for the B.C. Conservatives, is a white supremacist. The evidence behind this claim amounted to a 2017 photo of Isidorou, taken during his first year of university, wherein he wore a MAGA hat and made an “OK” hand gesture associated with the alt-right. Kahlon’s message was quickly amplified by Sarbjit Kaur, a panelist from CBC Power and Politics, who said that the B.C. Conservatives are, as a party, defined by white supremacy. Isodorou, who is biracial and half-Romani, publicly rebuked these accusations as “disgusting,” and wrote that his family consists of “immigrants who were all almost wiped out in the Greco-Armenian genocide” perpetrated by Turks in the 1910s. The Tyee, an influential left-wing publication based in B.C., followed up with a hit piece on Isidorou wherein it insinuated that he was racist because far-right influencer Lauren Southern was among the hundreds of people he had interacted with on X. None of the interactions shared by The Tyee contained any indication of racist views from Isidorou. Guilt by association was sufficient, apparently. In one case, the outlet even misrepresented a post written by Southern to give the impression that Isidorou is Islamophobic. The Tyee then published an article accusing B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad of “stoking fear” towards Indigenous communities through “racist grievance politics.” His sin, it seems, was his milquetoast stance on land title rights and economic development. Rustad wants to ensure, among other things, that the province has final say on Crown land use —  as was the case less than 10 years ago, when he was minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation under the previous B.C. Liberal government... Tim Thielmann, another B.C. Conservative candidate, noted on X that “our party is full of Brown, Black and Indigenous candidates” and that “if we were a ‘white nationalist’ party, it’d be the most counterproductive one in history.”... After reviewing each party’s election roster, I found that both the B.C. Conservatives and B.C. NDP appear to be running 26 candidates who can be considered racial minorities (this may be an undercount, though, as diversity is not always readily apparent by face or last name). That’s equal to 28 per cent of the total candidate pool, which means that both rosters are slightly less diverse than the province’s general population (according to the 2021 census, 34 per cent of British Columbians are non-white). I personally think that this diversity gap is narrow enough to dispel Eby’s narratives about conservative racism. Some might disagree, but they would then have to concede that, in this respect, the B.C. NDP is apparently festering with white supremacy as well... if only white voters counted, then the B.C. NDP would win the next election with a 1.6 point lead. But if this data is to be believed, then the main reason the B.C. Conservatives have a shot at forming government is because non-white voters support them by a huge margin (12.3 points in this poll). Who would have thought that non-white British Columbians could be such raging white supremacists? Perhaps they should ask Eby and his friends to educate them about the perils of racism. Or maybe —  just maybe — the B.C. NDP isn’t actually listening to the minority communities it so ardently claims to represent."
Clearly, minorities are too stupid to realise that they're white supremacists

Jamie Sarkonak: Liberal language police come for the 'able-bodied' - "Don’t say “person with special needs”; say “person who requires supports.” Don’t say “non-verbal”; say “person who does not use words or signs.” And absolutely do not say “normal” or “able-bodied”; say “person without a disability.” These are some of the new rules the public servants at Employment and Social Development Canada released in September to make English speakers less offensive when they talk about disabilities, or in there words “to support the federal public service and all Canadians to communicate accurately and confidently.” Only, many of these rules grasp at straws, smearing everyday, widely understood phrases as sinister... Inventing trouble where there isn’t any seems to be a consistent habit under this government, which has gone all-out on “inclusion.” The most extreme measures have been taken on the fronts of race and gender, but the politics of disability have been impacted just as well. See the language guide: its first version was created around 2017 , and it targeted primarily media, oddly trying to tell reporters what to say and how to say it. Its newest rendition targets the public service instead, with a list of blacklisted terms. Only, this government-approved language guide on disability isn’t exactly useful: much of it is too lengthy and euphemistic to be useful in actual human communication. I mean, come on, who actually says “person with a mental health disability” in their daily life? Maybe you’re depressed, maybe you have anxiety, maybe he’s schizophrenic, maybe she’s severely mentally ill — whatever it is, we shouldn’t need to expend 12 syllables getting the point across. Other terms ruled out by our dear government include “caretaker” (you’re to call them “support persons”), “wheelchair-bound” (they are now “people who use wheelchairs”), “hard of hearing” (they’re called “people with hearing loss”) and “dwarf” (they are “people of short stature”). More words, more syllables — all to say the same thing, sometimes with less specificity. We aren’t even supposed to communicate degrees of disability without sanitizing our words with bleach first. “Severely disabled” is thus a no-go now; instead, it’s “person with a high need for support” — a term that could just as easily refer to a newborn, a drug addict on the street, a mourning widow or a person going through cancer treatment. Not a very useful phrase. Our government even has the gall to nitpick new terms concerning autism: do not call them “high-functioning autistics,” but rather “autistic people with low support needs.” As if it wasn’t bad enough to shift the social rules for a group most disadvantaged by constantly-shifting social rules, the employment department added the following: “Note that Canadians on the autism spectrum have different opinions and preferences on language. Many autistic Canadians prefer identity-first language. Others prefer person-first language. Others prefer to use the terms ‘autism spectrum condition,’ or ‘on the autism spectrum.’ Also, some people have different preferences in terms of capitalization (‘Autism’ or ‘autism’). If you’re not sure, ask the person to tell you which terms they prefer.” In other words: the rule is that there are no rules. The opposite of useful — especially for the high-functioning/low-support-needing autistic government employees looking to the rules for genuine guidance... Cast the net for offensive language so wide that basic vocabulary is off the table renders the whole project useless, and sows the seeds for miscommunication and scandal later on. Indeed, that’s exactly what happened with the launch of this new language guide last week: observers were immediately offended at the guide’s suggestion that disabilities shouldn’t be mentioned in writing if disabilities aren’t relevant to said writing, resulting in the government issuing an apology for causing offence... It’s exactly what you’d expect from government communications geniuses steeped in far too much workplace inclusion training: a busybody project far too detached from regular Canadian parlance to be of any use. Yet another wondrous waste of state capacity at the hands of Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault. You’d think he could run a department with more efficiency, considering his recent, perhaps concurrent , private sector experience. I’m certainly not about to take linguistic direction from a handful of government workers who figure “caretaker” is an insult. If this is the best they can come up with, that’s yet another sign that downsizing is in order."
The euphemism treadmill moves on as usual

Top CDC Official: ‘We’ll Just Get Rid of All Whites in the United States’ Who Refuse Vaccines : r/ScienceUncensored - " Footage has surfaced of a top Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official saying that the elites should “get rid of of all the whites in the United States” and replace them with immigrants to reduce the number of people who refuse vaccines. Dr. Carol Baker made the alarming remarks during the “Achieving Childhood Vaccine Success in the U.S.” panel discussion sponsored by the National Meningitis Association in New York City on May 9, 2016:  “So I have the solution. Every study published in the last five years, when you look at vaccine refusers,” Baker told the panel. “I’m not talking about…hesitance, most of them we can talk into coming to terms. But refusers. We’ll just get rid of all the whites in the United States…Guess who wants to get vaccinated the most? Immigrants.”  Notably, Baker was appointed Chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization by Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in 2009. The Houston doctor was also honored with the Sabin Vaccine Institute’s 2019 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal at a Washington D.C. ceremony sponsored “in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Pfizer.”  This scientist's proposal overcomes even the wildest suggestions of conspiracy theorists - and no one of panel booed her for it. Is it really that surprising a Bill Gates-connected CDC official openly suggested depopulating whites who don’t cooperate with their mandatory vaccine agenda?"
When you're open about your agenda

Beyonce's Dad Mathew Knowles Slams CMA Awards for 'Cowboy Carter' Snub - "“There’s more white people in America and unfortunately they don’t vote based on ability and achievements, it’s still sometimes a white and black thing,” Knowles told the publication. “In America, there’s no accountability for people not being accepting of other cultures.”"

Meme - "White people homeschooling: Insidious, racist, evil.
Black people homeschooling: Heroic resistance to White evil."
"It may seem harmless, but the insidious racism of the American religious right's obsession with homeschooling speaks volumes, writes @AntheaButler."
"For Black Parents Resisting White-Washed History, Homeschooling Is an Increasingly Popular Option"
This got quoted in some masters thesis as evidence of white supremacy. You're not allowed to notice or worse, point out, left wing hypocrisy and doublethink, or you're a bad person

Meme - Jeff O'Bailey @JeffOBailey: "There he is, that's the bigot who thinks it's racist to discriminate against white people! *Jubilee pointing something out to Cyclops, Wolverine and Beast*"

Meme - End Wokeness @EndWokeness: "Finally, an ad with white people in it. Oh wait, they all have herpes and their savior is a black woman doctor."
"From White Men Are Stupid In Commercials"

Meme - *Lord of the Rings*
"Orcs and humans don't get along
Orcs and dwarwes don't get along
Ores and elves don't get along
At some point we must ask ourselves: Why are all other races so orcophobic?"

Coddled affluent professional on X - "It’s really amazing how quickly American intellectual and cultural life became Sovietized.  They were extraordinarily successful in creating paranoia: implicit bias, micro aggressions, invisible racism, strange new definitions of what was acceptable language that emanated weekly from the internet, coerced public affirmations of bizarre untruths (eg. ‘trans women are women’), inexplicable hysterias that erupted instantaneously and then disappeared just as quickly.  Everyone just decided, ‘well better to just shut up.’ While this tendency made sense in terms of individual self interest at scale in society it represented a cowardice that was quickly exploited. That’s why it’s so important to do whatever you can to undermine and immiserate them. It’s obviously better if they can be publicly and directly disparaged, but even if the most you can do is to passively aggressively undermine them a little each day, that’s important too.  Make them feel neurotic, keep them on edge, sap their unearned self satisfaction, diminish their enthusiasms and achievements.  Remember, a lot of these people are brittle and insecure narcissists who know deep down they’re mediocre. Keep the pressure on until they’re frazzled and crippled by self doubt."

Meme - National Georgraphic 2016 Cover: "The New Europeans. How waves of immigrants are reshaping a continent"
Damn far right conspiracy theories!

Meme - Mark Taylor: "When people say something's "racist," they mean it's true. If they meant what you said was untrue, they would have said that."

Jamaican Owner of Vacation Rental Company Says No More Black American Guests - "The Jamaican owner of the Rustic Mountain Living rental company shocked social media by saying she wouldn’t allow any more short-term stays. The reason? She’s fed up with the alleged misbehavior of Black American guests.  In a TikTok video, “The Barefoot Mountain Lady,” said she doesn’t believe all Black Americans are ill-mannered, but most of the ones she hosted were entitled, unappreciative and generally disrespectful in her presence.  She said she only ever had two mannerly Black American guests.  The most eyebrow-raising statement was toward the end. The owner claimed Black Americans are spoiled and expect the same “free sh*t” in Jamaica they supposedly get at home."
Damn anti-blackness and internalised white supremacy! Clearly she's an Oreo

Meme - *Surprised Joey*
"This country is institutionally racist" *leftists looking down*
"The Left controls every major institution in the country: Big Tech, the Corporate Media, the Academy, administrative government, & Hollywood" *leftists looking up surprised*
Left wingers continue to pretend that the left doesn't control everything, and bash Elon Musk for saying you need to fight the establishment, claiming that he is part of it, when everyone from the EU down is going after him. One cope is that only commies are on the left, therefore the left is powerless because full-blown communism is nowhere to be seen

Meme - evan loves worf @esjesjesj: "This has never happened"
Cartoon: Black Woman: "I'm not oppre..."
Purple haired white woman with Communist, Democratic Party, Islam and another badge: "SHH. Yes you are. You just don't know it. You see, I went to an ivy league school."
(Brown Woman) Ambrosia @TucciVuitton: "Nah. This has definitely happened to me Evan"
evan loves worf @esjesjesj: "You said that you weren't oppressed?"
Ambrosia @TucciVuitton: "Yes."
evan loves worf @esjesjesj: "Wait do you not think systemic racism exists"
Ironic. Proving the point himself. But I've seen this left winger's shit takes quite a lot, so this is no surprise

Meme - Woman in Hijab holding sign: "NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO SAYS "DON'T TELL YOUR PARENTS""
Hilariously (and tellingly), someone called this "right wing crap". It's telling that left wingers know what they're doing at some level and thus become uncomfortable when they're called out (many others in the thread thought this was talking about sexual assault). Rejoinder to her: "How is protecting kids considered Right wing ? Do you Lefties not protect your children ?"

Meme - "Western man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible. It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself. Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared. The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will, because they don't grasp what it really means: humiliation. The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it. And, superiority excites envy. Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call minorities." - Joseph Sobran

Hundreds of white farmers return to Zimbabwe in boost for agriculture - "It is too early to tell if the uptick in agriculture in a country once known as the breadbasket of Africa will haul up the rest of the economy."
iamyesyouareno on X - "Look at all that evil white colonialism. They begged him to come back because they would starve without him."
From 2023

Meme - "why do drag queens dress like this and not like women *flamboyant dress* *women in quiet pantsuits*
Because only one is appealing to CHILDREN"

"Anti-woke" 'Super Mario Bros Movie' Actually Includes a Drag Scene - "ironically, the film actually does include a scene that would be considered controversial and “woke,” especially given today’s climate with the queer community and various laws, gender affirming care being denied to transgender people, and drag shows being banned across the country. In one scene in the film, Kamek, who is Bowser’s right-hand man, is seen wearing drag. He’s essentially in a Princess Peach costume, with a full dress, wig, and make up. While the shot is brief, and is most likely a reference to one of the video game variations, it would still be considered drag within the confines of the recent proposed laws across the country, and definitely wouldn’t be considered “anti-woke.”"
Left wingers claim this shows how ignorant and hypocritical conservatives are, rather than recognising that the crossdressing in this and Mrs Doubtfire is qualitatively different from what they're trying to force on kids

Why America can’t build quickly anymore

Clearly, greedy companies and CEOs are the problem, and the solution is even more regulation, and the reason both China and Europe can build infrastructure more quickly is because they use slave labour.

Why America can’t build quickly anymore

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison has a hobby: he curates a list of examples of “people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.” Sadly, of his examples from the physical world⁠—like ports and skyscrapers and railroads⁠—most come from before 1970.

For each impressive example of speedy construction from the early or mid-20th century, Collison includes a beleaguered project from today’s world for the sake of contrast: for example, the New York Subway system opened with 28 stations in 1904, just four and a half years after the first contract was awarded. By contrast, the 2017 Second Avenue subway opening, with just three stations, took seventeen years.

That might be a fine system if you’re already happy with the infrastructure you have, and living in a time of relative peace and stability. But we’re not, and we aren’t.

In recent years we have seen serious shocks to our economic order. Events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine⁠—or, on a longer time frame, climate change⁠—have forced us to speedily reassess how we do business, in substantial and material ways. Importantly, these shocks don’t just call for a response in the financial world, like shuffling about some numbers on a computer. They call for real, physical responses⁠—like redesigning city infrastructure or constructing new power plants.

I no longer have faith that we are capable of doing this on a reasonable timeline.

Sometime in living memory, the built environment of the U.S. began to freeze in place. I’d mark the time roughly at 1970, but it’s a process, not a single seminal event. It’s more like a prehistoric creature getting trapped in resin, losing strength fighting the sticky substance. If it doesn’t escape soon, that resin will polymerize and harden into amber, leaving its form preserved forever.

Today’s high gas prices are the perfect example. Americans are universally unhappy about the high short-run costs of energy and transportation. And in the longer run, they aspire to make our economic life more independent of foreign dictators and their wars.

This isn’t a pie-in-the-sky aspiration. We could start doing this now, with the technology we already have. We could break ground on power plants to supply more energy. We could reduce energy demand by building public transportation projects, or build homes more densely to shorten commutes and save on heating.

But these things are easier said than done. Not because we lack the construction workers or the engineering expertise, or even readily drawn-up plans, but because there are legal and political structures that stop each of those ideas from happening through procedural delays.

At best, this is an annoyance that wastes billions of dollars and years worth of time. At worst⁠—at least, if you agree with climate change hawks⁠—it’s the end of the world. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) believes in an urgent need for greener infrastructure, at any cost.

“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” she lashed out at critics in 2019, “and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?”

Forget how we pay for it, for a moment. The bigger problem is that urgency just isn’t there, money or no money. Ocasio-Cortez represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, where you might imagine public transit would be part of the green infrastructure mix. But new subway stops take decades, and are scarcely built anymore. Queens hasn’t gotten a new subway station since October 1989, the month she was born. The Bronx hasn’t gotten one since May 1941.

If all you get out of twelve years is two thirds of a Second Avenue subway, then what chance do you have, really? The deadline might as well be next Friday.

When someone’s actions have a negative impact on uninvolved third parties, economists call this a negative externality. There are a few ways to deal with negative externalities. English economist Arthur Pigou recommends a tax, ideally in the amount of the harm. Sometimes⁠—as Ronald Coase showed⁠—the parties can negotiate a side payment to efficiently handle the harm.

But they were aware of the limits of their solutions. Sometimes you don’t know how much the harm is, or the parties can’t negotiate efficiently among themselves. At this point, you need to make policy choices, one way or another.

And this is where I feel that lawmakers of the 1970s made a huge mistake. Rather than accept the need for general rules, or choices by accountable elected officials, the lawmakers built a dispersed power structure filled with veto points that lends itself to analysis paralysis.

This style of thinking is present especially in environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the federal level, or the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) at the state level. These laws both require the government to conduct an exhaustive review of government projects—sometimes even permitting decisions on private projects—that might have negative environmental impacts. But more broadly, it’s also present in any political environment where politicians solicit community input on a specific project before going forward.

The theory goes, if you talk to everyone and collect information on all the possible effects of a decision, you have a great chance to get the best outcome. In practice, these “citizen voice” systems end up rigged heavily towards preservation of the status quo, they contain an incentive structure that makes them more expensive, and some of the information they act on is unquantifiable at best.

Review systems are supposed to weigh costs and benefits, and then help you make the best possible choice. They aren’t binding; they don’t force the government to act one way or another. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they get their object-level cost-benefit analysis generally correct.

There’s still a meta-level tradeoff, between acquiring more information and the costs of acquiring that information. The reports aren’t free. And more importantly, time isn’t free. The longer a project takes, the more it’s likely to cost, and the more land, efforts, and resources are tied up in a partially-completed project not yet bearing fruit. The longer a project takes, the more likely some aspect of the plan becomes obsolete or unfeasible midstream. And the longer a project takes, the later it begins to benefit people.

Additional pages of environmental paperwork are only valuable to the extent that they actually help change material decisions for the better, and only if the improvements they facilitate are more valuable than the time lost and the resources spent on the report.

It is obviously fair for authorities to take some time to plan things out and weigh the costs and benefits. But they spend, well, an inordinate amount of time weighing the costs and benefits. In a 2018 study of environmental impact statements under NEPA, the mean statement took 4.5 years to complete—about as long as it took to complete the original 28-station New York City subway back in 1904⁠—and ran 575 pages.

Here’s a thought experiment for you, one in what economists call thinking at the margin: take a 575 page report, and rank the pages from most valuable to least. How likely is it that the 500th- or 540th- or 572nd-most valuable page makes a material impact on your choices?

I imagine that the first six months and fifty pages of study yielded some important results, or even the next six months and the next fifty pages. But it is quite hard to imagine that government decisions are best served by spending the entire length of World War II, from Pearl Harbor to VJ day, doing cost-benefit analysis.

It would seem as if environmental review processes miss the meta-level tradeoff. The cost-benefit analysis never measures the cost of the analysis itself.

But the more likely explanation is that some participants understand the meta-level tradeoff all too well.

The problem with processes where you spend a long time gathering information and hearing arguments before you take action⁠ is that they are heavily biased towards maintaining the status quo.

Let’s say you think something should be done, and I don’t. While we work on our disagreement, nothing gets done. This isn’t a good structure for speedy resolution of disagreements, because I am incentivized to make the process longer.

The key tool that opponents of action have available is lawsuits. They can sue the state for permitting projects they don’t like⁠—not because they can prove a decision was wrong on the merits, but simply because the environmental review didn’t sufficiently evaluate their concerns. This forces the government to go back and write an even longer environmental impact statement. Such a move might not change the ultimate decision, but it drags out the process for a few more months or years.

Consider, for example, the Berkeley lawsuit under CEQA, California’s state-level version of NEPA, which Tim wrote about last month. Activists argued that expanding enrollment at Berkeley was an action subject to environmental review, and that the state had not sufficiently studied the impact of Berkeley enrollment. Critically, they didn’t need to prove that raising Berkeley’s enrollment would actually harm the environment. They simply argued that Berkeley enrollment hadn’t been adequately studied, and that was enough—at least until the legislature overrode the court decision.

The current rules to challenge environmental reviews do not require opponents’ concerns to be especially plausible, or even sincere. Instead, challenges often remind me of Robert Nozick’s Utility Monster, a creature whose preferences are so strong that it gains tons of happiness any time it wins a concession and becomes violently sad any time it loses at anything. By expressing its dramatically strong preferences, the utility monster hijacks utilitarian systems of decision making.

For example, it is difficult to believe that shadows⁠—an issue used frequently to block new buildings in San Francisco⁠—are actually deeply concerning to people living there. After all, they spend quite a lot of time under the shade of the already-existing buildings, often deliberately through features like porches.

Instead, I believe that complaints about shadows are a pro forma ritual. San Francisco’s community input process more or less gives NIMBY groups a veto over development without formally enumerating the veto into a property right. Instead, neighbors just have to demonstrate sufficient anguish to produce the utilitarian justification for the veto.

And this is where I think the advocates of externalities-based thinking have gotten too far over their skis. It is well and good to have the government handle large externalities, or quantifiable ones. I should pay for the wear and tear my car puts on the road. I should pay for the carbon impact of my emissions. But by expanding government’s scope to handle small externalities, and unquantifiable ones, they’ve created a system where few things are doable as-of-right, everything is up for debate, and people are incentivized to exaggerate or even fake grievances.

For a particularly egregious example of fake grievances, consider the Vineyard Wind project, an attempt to build wind farms off of the coast of Massachusetts. This is a project desired by both the state and federal government, and both accountable levels of government were ready to give it the green light.

However, because the wind farms were in the water, they were subject to permitting review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and therefore, required an environmental impact statement under NEPA. Although the environmental impact statement was more than 2,000 pages long, a rival energy producer nonetheless sued BOEM in 2021 to argue that the statement did not sufficiently consider various concerns, like whether 260-meter turbines might have a different impact on migratory birds than 200-meter turbines.

It is, I suppose, plausible that the rival energy producer has deep and sincere concerns about the accuracy of BOEM’s study with respect to birds that fly between 200 and 260 meters of height, specifically. But I think it much more likely that this is an affectation: utility monster behavior by an energy company that wants less competition.

Much of the change aversion built into our political systems reflects people’s sincere preferences, especially at the local levels. But I think reforms can be made at the macro level. I doubt people ever intended for our infrastructure-building process to become so frozen as it is, in aggregate. But we can fix it some,  by reining in lawsuit-based case-by-case input processes and returning towards clearly-defined laws and executive decisions by elected officials.

Links - 12th October 2024 (1 - Trans Mania)

Modern youth gender additudes seem bizarrely regressive, particularly around non-binary identity : r/SeriousConversation - "Okay, first things first, who am I: I'm an 18 year old guy. I'm gen-Z, grew up around plenty of queer friends, and the general cultural bubble young people create. I'm also a gay guy who had problems for years with my relationship with gender stereotypes.  My point here is less to refute identity as they exist, and more to argue against the bigger cultural context they create. In many ways, what I see is a reanalysis of gender non-conformity as a problem viewed primarily through a persons gender, and not the norms themselves. People see someone who doesn't conform, and the "thing to do" is question their gender identity and not question what they aren't conforming to.  So you create a 3-box system. Male, Female, NB, but in doing so you simply reinforce the Male/Female social roles by declaring that not being "masculine" makes you "not a man", or that being a feminine man makes you "not a man", etc. A woman who isn't "traditionally feminine" isn't going against traditional femininity, they just aren't a woman. It's, when taken together, just another justification for the enforcement of heteronormative, patriarchal gender ideas through a lense of apparent liberation. It doesn't go against the status quo, it is the status quo, just reapplied.  On a less theoretical level, my point is mostly that, in my life so far, the people I see that care most about gender seem to have fallen into a belief system that treats our cultural understand of gender as, yet again, a set-in-stone framework into which we must fit ourselves. They're the people most involved in gendering others, and in so doing are just another mechanism in the never-ending cycle of people not being allowed to just.... be people."
When people invent "gender" and equate it to gender roles just so they can feel special with a new identity

When did this weird pronoun trend start? I feel embarrassed listening to this character dialogue in Jedi Survivor... : r/KotakuInAction - "According to Blaire White, this started in 2015 after gay marriage was legalized across the US. Because they needed something else to be oppressed about."
"Oh it started earlier than that, that’s just when it started getting mainstream acceptance.  I knew three they/thems in 2012"
"I take it you were in high school or college at the time? Yeah, I can't really say I knew any of those back in my youth (the trend hadn't really caught on back then, thank God) but I knew plenty of Wiccans, furries and otherkin. And whatever the fuck weird fetishes were floating around DeviantArt, Tumblr, MySpace, LiveJournal and the like."
"God, I'm so glad that I'm not anywhere near that age anymore. I can't imagine what it's like nowadays. I can do you one better mate. I'm actually old enough where I have friends whose kids are teenagers now. I've known a couple whose kids "discovered" they were "gender special" of some sort in high school only to go back to being normal within a year or two of graduating. Make of that what you will, but so often their "deeply held" identity means nothing once they grow up."
"It also explains why they try to latch onto the whole "MAP" thing. It's not about acceptance or equality. It's about being "different," "unique," even "special." They desperately want to be "oppressed," but also shock and offend people. It explains why they keep pushing half naked guys in bondage gear at pride parades. Or the fucking MAPs again."

When did this weird pronoun trend start? I feel embarrassed listening to this character dialogue in Jedi Survivor... : r/KotakuInAction - "Previously: don't label people or judge them based upon labels.
Now: I chose this label therefore I am a victim and this single label 100% dictates my thoughts and actions."

When did this weird pronoun trend start? I feel embarrassed listening to this character dialogue in Jedi Survivor... : r/KotakuInAction - "I work at a company where 80% of the employees are Indian  I actually figured out a VALID USE for pronouns:  If you work with a lot of Indians.  For instance, the other day I was contacted by someone, and literally had zero idea if the person was male or female. I've never met anyone at my company ever, I've never even seen the office or been in the city where it is.  I was in a rush, so I rolled the dice and used "they" instead of "he," and I'm sure glad I did, because it turned out to be a woman 😰  I once interviewed at Facebook, and didn't get the gig, and I'm 99% sure that was also due to a case of "mistaken identity," so this shit can be real important for one's career I think! (Basically I was scheduled to have lunch with Facebook's recruiter at noon. When a woman showed up at noon in my conference room, I got up and asked her where we were going to eat. I basically treated her like the HR recruiter, because my schedule said the HR recruiter would take me to get lunch at noon. Turned out the woman was the director of the entire group that I was interviewing in, and the SECOND I treated her like some HR Droid, you could just see that look on her face like "fuck this guy, doesn't he know who I am?!")"

When did this weird pronoun trend start? I feel embarrassed listening to this character dialogue in Jedi Survivor... : r/KotakuInAction - "I'm all for it, because anyone who uses or insists you call them something other than he or she is immediatley identified as a weirdo and/or activist and blocked/ignored, it makes life so much easier. As for use in games, it's the same, it identifies that the devs have been infiltrated by activists and have no backbone to stand up to them. Which means I have no interest in their games."
"Lol, imagine telling your boss to call you Gorlock the Destroyer or he's a bigot and will have to fire himself."
"'Per my annual HR sexual harassment training '
Hah - I had to go through that nonsense recently. One of the videos we watched literally said:
'"A person's sexual orientation can change many times throughout their life - it's true!"'
(not gender identity, it specifically said "sexual orientation")  I nearly threw my computer through the window. The message that has been relentlessly pounded into our heads for the past 30 years is that sexual orientation is a fixed, immutable thing that is hard-coded before birth and cannot change NO MATTER WHAT.  Somebody better apologize to those gay conversion camps..."

Meme - Sans Cipher Reborn @BillSansCipher: "Lawyer here, and this is straight up false."
Flower Girl Miyu-chan *Trans flags* @m..: ""l am a lawyer because I said so""
Patches @snibbetysnab: ""I am a girl because I said so""

Meme - "In Polish the word for "non binary" is "niebinarny" or "niebinarna" depending on the person's gender"

Meme - Creep Watch: "This creep has reached the end of his "simulated pregnancy" and it was "stillborn" so he has taken two weeks off work to "process his feelings" and joined a support group for mothers of stillborn children to help him grieve. Oh and he wants to lactate and donate the milk!!! As a friend said, I'm sorry, but if you still support this movement, you are dumb as dogshit, there's no other way I can describe it. #peaktrans"
Gabrielle Darone, Princess Mom: "37 weeks into my simulated pregnancy. About three more weeks to go... #TransSimPregnancy"

Trump falsely claims children being forced into gender transition ops at school in rambling fantasy-filled rally speech - "Donald Trump falsely claimed yet again that children are the subject of “brutal” gender operations at schools across the US. “Kamala supports states being able to take minor children and perform sex change operations, take them away from their parents, perform sex change operations, and send them back home,” Trump said... In states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under the age of 18, parental consent is required."
As usual, "this is not happening, and it's good that it is". Oregon allows teens 15 years old and older to consent to gender-related surgeries without parental consent. The cope is that this doesn't happen because the "standards of care followed by doctors don't recommend surgeries for minors", but we know that the "standards of care" are already regularly violated

We accept teenagers taking the pill - why don't we feel the same about puberty blockers? - "In my opinion, puberty blockers are in the same bracket as the contraceptive pill, entirely suitable for young people with proper medical supervision. Following political pressure, the NHS has announced plans to ban puberty blockers for young people under 18 outside of clinical research, after interim findings from the Cass Review, an independent report into gender-affirming care."
Amazing false equivalence as usual. Clearly 98% of teenagers who take the pills go on to more extreme measures which damage their health
Trust the Science - if it pushes the left wing agenda

Colin Wright on X - ""A woman is an adult human person that has a desire to be in accordance with a particular set of social and cultural norms that are typically associated with the female sex."  At least they're being openly transparent about how regressive their ideology is now.   They used to opt for the circular definition of woman as "anyone who identifies as a woman" to avoid directly revealing that a woman to them IS one big hyperfeminine stereotype. But not they're more comfortable just saying what we all knew they believed all along.  People are sharing this video as a big win for the gender ideologue. As an atheist, I think Kirk's position about gender and God is nonsensical. But people shouldn't give the gender activist a pass with that absurdly regressive definition of "woman."  This is a massive L for both of these men."

Meme - Emmie 🦎 @SullivanStar221: "I've been adding these stickers to women's restrooms but you can only see it if you stand to pee 😁 *Transing kids is child abuse*"

Sall Grover on X - "The Queensland premier, aka leading politician in the state, did a post about protecting women. I responded offering to meet with him to talk about protecting women as a sex class in law that men cannot ID into. He blocked me. I am a Queensland resident. A story in 3 acts:"

Brief - Parents-v.-Montgomery-Co.-Maryland-Schools-Amicus-FINAL.pdf - "The Montgomery County, Maryland, School District, like some other school districts around the country, has adopted a policy allowing children of any age to secretly adopt a new gender identity at school, requiring all staff to treat them as though they were the opposite sex, without parental notice or consent, and even directing staff to conceal this from parents in various ways."
TRAs pretend this sort of policy does not exist
TRAs pretend that as long as the child does not want parents to know, this is proof that the parents will harm the child and is a sufficient reason to not tell them. Of course, if you apply this to test grades / exam results, it all falls apart and schools should not tell parents how their kids are doing in school (unless the TRAs bite the bullet and accept that logic here too - good luck with that)
Someone claimed that the policy was about not telling parents when the school thought that would endanger the kid. But that's not what the policy says: "staff shall not “disclose a student’s status to others, including parents/guardians … unless legally required to do so or unless students have authorized such disclosure.”"

When Students Change Gender Identity, Should Schools Tell Their Parents? - The New York Times - "Some states, such as California, New Jersey, and Maryland, expressly advise schools not to disclose information about students’ gender identity without their permission, while others offer antidiscrimination guidance that is open to interpretation... Some teachers have been penalized for notifying parents that their children changed names and pronouns at school. One father in Massachusetts, Stephen Foote, said he had only learned that his 11-year-old had done so after the child’s sixth-grade teacher, Bonnie Manchester, confided in him. Ms. Manchester was later fired, in part for disclosing “sensitive confidential information about a student’s expressed gender identity against the wishes of the student,” according to her termination letter.  Mr. Foote sued the school district, accusing it of violating his parental rights. A lawyer for the district said it disagreed with Mr. Foote’s version of events. Ms. Manchester said she didn’t regret her actions.  “I shined a light on something that was in the dark,” Ms. Manchester said. “I was willing to lose my job.”  Other teachers believe they have a moral responsibility to withhold such information.  “My job, which is a public service, is to protect kids,” said Olivia Garrison, a history teacher in Bakersfield, Calif., who is nonbinary, who has helped students socially transition at school without their parents’ knowledge. “Sometimes, they need protection from their own parents.”... One mother said her middle-schooler had secretly changed names and pronouns without her knowledge, even though she had worked as a teacher at the same school. Another mother shared how high school teachers had hidden her teenager’s social transition from her until graduation because they thought she wouldn’t be supportive enough. A mother of a 14-year-old who had spent time in an inpatient therapy facility said she had sent her school a letter from the student’s psychiatrist outlining concerns that the school had ignored. Most said they identified as liberal, and that the living room was a rare safe space for them to voice their fears. Some parents didn’t think their teenagers were really transgender. Others thought it was too soon to know for certain. Most said their children had mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, or autism.  Here they could ask: What if their children had been unduly influenced by their classmates to ask for hormone treatments and surgery? What if teachers were encouraging students to see their families as unsafe? And were right-wing partisans their only sympathetic audience?... Since 2020, at least 11 lawsuits alleging that these policies violate parental rights have been filed against school districts by parents... Wendell and Maria Perez, who filed a lawsuit in Florida against their child’s elementary school district with the assistance of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. They claim that only after their child made two suicide attempts did the school tell them that an employee had been counseling their 12-year-old about “gender confusion” for months.  Earlier in the year, Mr. Perez said, the school had notified them that their child had fallen behind academically. So why was this different? “We were always available,” he said. “I don’t know why they decided to hide this from us.”... Courts have ruled that under the Fourteenth Amendment, parents get to make medical and mental health decisions for their children, as well as direct their education and upbringing in other ways, unless they are abusive or unfit"
We're still told that teachers don't transition their students without their parents' knowledge
Weird. Left wingers tell us that these things should be between doctors and patients, but schools apparently know better than students' psychiatrists

Thread by @jk_rowling on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Today has seen the publication of a damning report into the culture of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre under CEO Mridul Wadhwa, a man who identifies as a woman. According to the report's author, legal specialist Vicky Ling, the regime of the rape crisis centre under the trans-identified CEO “caused damage” to survivors. Some “did not feel safe” using it. It was because I knew sexual assault victims were self-excluding from the only rape support centre in my home city, that I founded and fund @beirasplace, a woman-only service for female survivors of sexual assault in Edinburgh and Lothian. @beirasplace Responding to Ling's report, Rape Crisis Scotland said today: 'It is important that survivors can make informed choices about the services they access at Rape Crisis Centres, and we recognise that for some survivors this includes the choice of a single sex service.' Yet Edinburgh Rape Crisis has never referred a woman in search of a single sex service to @beirasplace and was found to have constructively dismissed support worker Roz Adams for believing that service users have the right to know the sex of staff. A staff SLACK conversation about @beirasplace came to light during Roz's tribunal. The opening of the new single-sex centre was described by one employee as 'really terrible news' and 'a festive stinker.' Umbrella organisation Rape Crisis Scotland claims to have been in ignorance of the Edinburgh centre's failings. As @ForWomenScot says below, this is nonsense. They were warned, yet supported Wadhwa and his ideology throughout his tenure. @ForWomenScot Chief Executive Sandy Brindley appears to have been fine with Wadhwa's publicly expressed views that female survivors are 'bigots' if they don't want to share spaces with trans-identified men and that the best way to deal with gender critical staff is to fire them. Wadhwa remained in post even after the Edinburgh centre allowed a man now convicted of serious sexual assault, who the judge said harbours 'hostility towards women', to access a space supposedly reserved for traumatised female survivors. Some might have expected the Chief Exec and her 'amazing sister' to resign today, but no. The government continues to fund a service dominated by ideologues, vulnerable women have been denied help, and Brindley and Wadhwa continue to draw their salaries."

Trans boss of rape crisis centre quits after damning criticism - "A trans activist who led a rape crisis centre has quit after a damning report found the service “damaged” survivors and failed to protect women and girls in its care. Mridul Wadhwa’s departure was confirmed by the board of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) after the chief executive was found to have “failed to set professional standards of behaviour” and “did not understand the limits on her role’s authority”. Wadhwa was previously identified by an employment judge as the “invisible hand” behind a “heresy hunt” against staff espousing gender-critical views... This week’s report, commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland, found that Wadhwa had failed to ensure ERCC carried out its primary function: to deliver services to women and girls who have experienced sexual violence... ERCC made “no mention of dedicated spaces/times for women and girls” in its current strategy document, nor in the “who we support and our services” section on its website, according to the findings... The report highlighted that under Wadhwa ERCC lacked focus on the core requirements of a rape crisis centre. During her research, Ling asked the ERCC for further information on the women-only services it provided but was told there was “very little demand” for them... Ling said: “Putting women in the position of having to discuss whether the service they receive will be provided by someone who was born and continues to identify as female has caused damage and does not amount to the provision of protected ‘women-only’ spaces.” The report also questioned the values adopted by ERCC which were not “fully consistent” with national service standards. Accepted criteria such as “survivor-centred”, “trauma-informed” and “gender-informed” were augmented by two new approaches, “loving” and “brave”. These innovations were not “best practice”, said Ling, and appeared “both inappropriate and to raise boundary issues when used in the context of survivors of gender-based violence”. As soon as the findings were published Rape Crisis Scotland, the umbrella group, paused referrals to the Edinburgh centre... Under Wadhwa, ERCC’s internal inquiry was “reminiscent of the work of Franz Kafka”, according to Ian McFatridge, the employment judge. Many critics see the ERCC crisis as the result of trans-inclusive polices pursued when Nicola Sturgeon was first minister, which they say were promoted by government-funded organisations such as Rape Crisis Scotland. Joanna Cherry, the former MP and a critic of gender ideology, said the report showed that Wadhwa “failed to set professional standards of behaviour [and] should resign or be dismissed without further delay”. Cherry, a critic of Sturgeon’s policy, said the former first minister expected “Stalinist adherence to the leadership line” on gender issues. The campaign group For Women Scotland said Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, should also resign. Marion Calder, the co-founder of For Women Scotland, said: “Brindley needs to go because this is a culture that she fostered. She has stated on multiple occasions that there are no males at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, and that approach has affected the whole of service in Scotland. “Certain autonomous services are too scared to speak out and the most vulnerable women have been failed. Aberdeen Rape Crisis Centre was holding up trans flags on the day of the tribunal. It is culturally toxic.”"

Nina Paley on X - ""Men and boys have participated in over 8,731 women's competitions. They have placed 1st at least 2,903 times and top three at least 4,747 times. They have stolen at least $1,600,087 in prizes and 446 awards...."
Male athletes in Women's sports
Weird. TRAs keep claiming that if trans women really had an advantage in sports, they'd be topping all the competitions

Brianna Wu on X - "Some things most trans people believed 10 years ago that are forbidden to say now:
✅ You shouldn’t transition unless you absolutely, positively have to. If you can find other ways to cope, do that.
✅ Integration is the goal. “Genderfuck” is an interesting if rare and eccentric alternative.
✅ You are responsible for the gender people perceive you as. If you are being misgendered, you should think critically about what is going wrong and make changes.
✅ If it takes you until 30 to figure out you’re trans, that’s okay.
✅ You should have a job or be in school."
BLAIRE WHITE on X - "💯💯💯"
Brianna Wu on X - "You ever think about how crazy things have gotten that we are now on the exact same side of this? I do."

Meme - WomensForumAustralia @WomensForumAust: "🚨🚨🚨 After blocking it from going to a public inquiry last month, this week, @RogerCookMLA 's @walabor  Government passed an urgency motion to ram its sex self-ID bill through parliament with as little scrutiny as possible.  The bill passed last night.
🚩 Anyone can now apply to change their legal sex in Western Australia, including male perpetrators of violence against women, who will now be able to legally identify as women and access female only spaces and services including bathrooms and refuges.
🚩 Pictured between WA Premier Roger Cook (left) and WA Attorney General John Quigley (right) is one of the bill's advocates, Dani (formerly Dean) Laidley, a trans-identified male who has a history of stalking a woman and breaching a family violence order.
🚩 This is who the WA Labor Government is prioritising over safety, privacy and dignity for women and girls.
#SexMatters #NoToSelfID #WApol"
""THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN LABOR GOVERNMENT HAS PASSED ITS SEX SELF-ID BILL ALLOWING MEN TO LEGALLY IDENTIFY AS WOMEN AND ERADICATING FEMALE-ONLY SPACES."

Meme - "The Class Act" Ty Cordova: "Democrats think the first Donald Trump assassination attempt was fake. The second Donald Trump assassination attempt was fake. Joe Biden wearing a Donald Trump hat was fake. Hunter Biden's laptop was fake and Ashley Biden's diary was fake... But they think pregnant men are real."

Meme - Patrick Parkinson @ProfPParkinson: "This is new data from the US based on survey data from nearly 2 million adults, published by Jean Twenge. Here is the graph showing transgender identification by year of birth. *skyrocketing by date of birth, going up to over 10x the lowest number*"

Meme - Fingers @MikeJazzpenis: "I hope the irony of superficially changing the outside of something while the inside stays exactly the same wasn't lost on shim"
"Transgender artist removes J.K. Rowling's name from Harry Potter books, resells them"

Meme - The Heretical Liberal: ""my wife has supported my transition but I'm still miserable because she refuses to rebrand herself as a lesbian. As a trans person it is my right to determine everyone else's sexual orientation for them, and if they refuse to accept my decision on their sexual orientation they are transphobic"
The only thing more shocking than the absolute entitlement these men feel over women's bodies/identities/spaces is the large number of women (many of them who consider themselves feminists) who will die on the hill to support them. Crazy times."
r/askAGP: "I'm a Trans Woman I My wife won't accept that she is now a lesbian
I have been married for 22 years, and I recently started transitioning 2 months ago. Initially, my wife was extremely transphobic, but she has made significant strides in understanding and supporting me. She even went back to work so that I can focus on my transition. However, the challenge I'm facing is that she refuses to accept that she is now a lesbian. Despite being married to me, a woman, she still identifies as heterosexual. This causes me significant dysphoria. Do you have any advice on how I can help her understand and embrace the fact that she has been married to a woman for 22 years?"

Trans people in England missing out on vital cancer screening, experts warn - "Trans people in England missing out on vital cancer screening, experts warn  Loss of key data when changing registered gender with GP means thousands are not invited to routine exams Anna Bawden in Geneva Thu 19 Sep 2024 18.13 BST  Thousands of transgender patients in England are missing out on vital cancer screening because of the way their GP records are drawn up, experts have warned.  Everyone registered as female with their GP is automatically invited to breast screening from the age of 50 to 70, and to regular cervical screenings from 25 to 64.  But warnings from experts at the World Cancer Congress in Geneva this week, underscored by official NHS guidance, show that many trans patients are not invited to undergo the tests.  In England, trans men who were registered female at birth and have changed the gender on their patient record to male are not offered breast or cervical screening, regardless of whether they have had chest reconstruction or a hysterectomy.  Trans women who are still registered male with their GP are also not offered routine breast screening, even if they have been on longterm hormone therapy, which puts them at added risk of breast cancer... Because the breast and cervical screening programmes use patients’ current gender to generate appointment invitations, many trans patients are missing out... O’Callaghan said more could be done. “The system needs to find a way to track trans status without removing a person’s right to privacy.  They added: “A potential solution would be having both gender and sex registered at birth on the patient record, but the latter only being accessible at a system level or by clinicians with permission. But any solution to this issue must be co-created with trans patients directly.”"
Reminding trans people of their biological sex is transphobic and literally genocide
If only there were a field the NHS could use to target patients correctly...

Friday, October 11, 2024

Links - 11th October 2024 (2 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

Meme - "*Palestinian flag* WHERE WERE YOU WHEN... Palestinians were firing rockets at Israeli citizens?
2024 - 8,500+ missiles fired at Israelis
2023 - 12,642 missiles fired at Israelis
2022 - 1,115 missiles fired at Israelis
2021 - 4,425 missiles fired at Israelis
2020 - 155 missiles fired at Israelis
2019 - 808 missiles fired at Israelis
2018 - 346 missiles fired at israelis
2017 - 53 missiles fired at Israelis
2016 - 16 missiles fired at Israelis
2015 - 25 missiles fired at Israelis
2014 - 4,594 missiles fired at Israelis
2013 - 70 missiles fired at Israelis
2012 - 2,417 missiles fired at Israelis
2011 - 680 missiles fired at Israelis
2010 - 269 missiles fired at Israelis
2009 - 858 missiles fired at Israelis
2008 - 3,103 missiles fired at Israelis
2007 - 2,807 missiles fired at Israelis
2006 - 1,275 missiles fired at Israelis
2005 - 860 missiles fired at Israelis
2004 - 1,158 missiles fired at at Israelis
2003 - 637 missiles fired at Israelis
2002 - 472 missiles fired at Israelis
2001 - 161 missiles fired at Israelis
Total missiles fired at Israeli citizens since 2001: 47,546
And that doesn't include the thousands of stabbing attacks, car ramming attacks, shootings, fire balloons, and molotov cocktail attacks by Palestinians. Where were your bleeding heart posts while that was going on?"

Meme - "*Palestinian flag* Starting a brutal war
Celebrating the massacre
Losing the war & Playing the victim"

Thread by @Aizenberg55 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "🧵Many leading worldwide military experts affirm that Israel is complying with rules of war in Gaza – no war crimes, no genocide, no indiscriminate attacks. In sharp contrast all reports by NGOs UN ICJ ICC claiming war crimes never cite military experts. Review of 10 experts:
John Spencer @SpencerGuard is the leading expert on urban warfare, at West Point the top US military academy. Spencer has written extensively how Israel’s actions to limit civilian harm are unprecedented. Like the others, he is simply pro-truth.
British General Sir John McColl was Deputy Commander of NATO Forces, so his view carries weight. He wrote piece titled “I know Israel’s doing all it can to save civilians” which says it all. NGOs can’t cite NATO leaders to support their fake “reports.”
General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended Israel’s actions in Gaza noting the US would certainly do the same, and that there was no way around collateral damage given Hamas’ tactics.
Major Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox served in UK Army 2005-21 and lectured at Sandhurst, UK’s top military academy. Fox has spent considerable time on the ground in Gaza and with IDF leadership, noting how IDF actions comply with international law.
Military experts Geoffrey Corn @cornjag1 (Chair of Military Law at Texas Tech Univ. & Lt Col US Army) and Lt. General George Smith noted Israel “consistently implements its legal obligation to avoid, whenever feasibly, [civilian deaths].”
Colonel Richard Kemp @COLRICHARDKEMP who led British Forces in Afghanistan also spent extensive time in Gaza with IDF. He said “No army takes more precaution than the Israel Defense Forces in order to prevent civil casualties.”
Italian general Vincenzo Camporini and former Chief of the Defence General Staff, among many military leaders and experts, wrote a detailed brief to the ICC defending Israel’s action in Gaza, that they conform with the Laws of Armed Conflict, see key paragraph from document:
General David Petraeus, who led US forces in Afghanistan & Iraq, has been critical of Israel’s Gaza strategy & endgame, but defended IDF action to get rid of Hamas, noted collateral damage is to be expected and Gaza is "vastly harder" than US faced.
Lt. Gen David Deptula @Deptula_David & scholar on aerospace studies wrote: “The military activities I saw, as well as the processes and procedures followed by the Israeli military, are indicative of the IDF complying with the laws of armed conflict.”
A group of 7 US generals, admirals, etc. (see list of names below) in an 85-page study noted Israel’s “overall compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict.” There are many more names that could be added to this thread.
A search for military experts arguing Israel is violating the rules of war in Gaza comes up empty. There is plenty of criticism of strategy, endgame & leadership, but not that IDF is deliberately killing civilians. Fake NGOs @hrw @amnesty @btselem can only fabricate & lie. END"

Thread by @AmichaiChikli on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "UNRWA was meant to operate for only two years, providing assistance to 199,000 Arab refugees in the Gaza Strip from the War of Independence and about 500,000 additional individuals registered as war refugees. —— A thread 🧵
However, unlike millions of war refugees around the world, the palestinian's refugees were given a privilege that no other group has ever received – they were given the right to pass down their refugee status to future generations, regardless of their political or economic situation. This made the Palestinians the only group in the world that continues to expand the global refugee population, with 5.9 million Palestinian refugees as of 2023 (in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and more). To understand just how distorted this organization is, UNRWA employs almost twice as many staff as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The eternal refugee status of the Palestinians serves one purpose only: to perpetuate the conflict with Israel and challenge its right to exist through the claim of the “Right of Return.” UNRWA quickly became the spearhead for indoctrinating young Palestinians into a war of annihilation against Israel and the “re-establishment” of the so-called State of Palestine, all under the guise of a humanitarian organization with the UN’s seal of approval. Over the years, UNRWA has siphoned billions from European countries, the United States, Canada, and others.
It is impossible to understand the eruption of the volcanic hatred we saw on October 7 without understanding the mechanisms of incitement that operated under UNRWA, from early childhood through to high school, in both formal and informal education: kindergartens, summer camps, elementary schools, high schools, and youth movements. This is beyond the direct involvement of 12 UNRWA staff members in the massacres and the participation of hundreds in Hamas activities in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. UNRWA is a terror entity that operates a propaganda and incitement mechanism not unlike that of Hitler Youth. Money flows to terrorist organizations, and its facilities are often used as a haven for terrorist activities, rockets, and weapons."

Eyal Yakoby on X - "Breaking: The UN is now seeking diplomatic immunity for its employees involved in the Oct. 7th massacre. The UN, rather than holding their employees accountable, are actually trying to get them immunity. We should not send another dollar to this terror-supporting organization."
"Disclosure: The UN demands immunity for UNRWA employees involved in the October 7 massacre"

Vivid.🇮🇱 on X - "BREAKING: The United Nations 🇺🇳 demands immunity for UNRWA employees involved in the massacre on October 7th. This is a photo of two UNRWA terrorists after killing an Israeli civilian on October 7th and kidnapping his body. Am I tripping, or has this world gone mad?"

Rep. Ilhan Omar on X - "We must restore funding to UNRWA now. With this bill to restore UNRWA funding, we have an opportunity to bring back life-saving care to nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees. It's time to show moral courage and stand up for the vulnerable."
Wilfred Reilly on X - ""The Squad" is just straight-up pro-terrorism - like, legitimately cheering for Hamas. UNRWA is the Hamas front that ran the madrasa-style schools in pre-war Gaza, teaching such lessons as "Why the Nakbah (founding of Israel) can never be forgiven.""

Visegrád 24 on X - "Great video showing that UNRWA pretends to help Palestinians but in reality only serves Hamas & other Islamist forces in Palestine. Regular Gazans are oppressed by UNRWA. The UN body operates like Qatar. Pretends to help Palestinians but in reality sacrifices them for Islamism"
*7 Palestinians testifying that UNRWA supports Hamas, engages in terrorism and hates Palestinian dissidents, and 3 about rejection of welfare applications/job applicants because the applicants aren't sufficiently religious or supported by the mosque*

Eyal Yakoby on X - "Breaking: Palestine Action US has released a video of them epoxying credit card readers and door locks at 6 NYC banks. They then spray painted Hamas logos onto buildings. The founder of the UK arm of the group was arrested on grounds of materially supporting terrorist groups."

Kassy Akiva on X - "🚨BREAKING🚨 A man wearing a Palestinian pin was shot in the stomach this evening after he charged through traffic and tackled a pro-Israel Iraq war veteran in Newton, Massachusetts."
Kassy Akiva on X - "They are charging the veteran with:
- Assault and battery with a dangerous weapon
- Violation of a constitutional right causing injury
On the second: Yes, the man who got tackled while protesting is being accused of "violation of a constitutional right." What?"

Kassy Akiva on X - "Here is the press conference with Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan announcing that Scott Hayes will be charged after shooting the man with a pro-Palestinian pin who tackled him during a protest."
Walter Sobchak on X - "The prosecutor who charged Scott Hayes, Marian Ryan, has a dangerous past. She once charged & convicted an innocent woman, Jaime Caetano, whose boyfriend was abusing her, for possessing a stun gun. SCOTUS unanimously reversed the decision - with this rebuke from Justice Alito:"

Meme - Kassy Akiva @KassyAkiva: "Caleb Gannon, the man who tackled Scott Hayes and was shot, retweeted a post saying Zionists should feel "unsafe everywhere.""
Caleb *hiccup* Gannon reposted: trans judeo-bolshevik @transjewtalian: "the correct response to zionists feeling unsafe on college campuses is "good, zionists should feel unsafe everywhere-no one who supports a genocidal ideology should ever feel safe from repercussions""

Meme - *Israeli soldiers waving flag with civilians in bunker below*
*Palestinian civilians in house waving flag with bunker with weapons and militants below*
"THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW"
Palestinian militant: "BABA! I murdered 10 people!"
Israeli soldier: "Mom! I saved 10 people!"

Steve McGuire on X - "BREAKING: “Princeton students, alumni, and community members” have published a “People’s Style Guide” that defends Hamas, questions the concept of terrorism, and complains that we keep hearing about the hostages.  They say “‘terrorist’ is the word that Western governments use to malign political actors that threaten western hegemony.”  They think it is critical to know that Hamas is not “just a militant group, it also has a sophisticated political infrastructure concerned with governance, movement building, and development of a welfare state in Palestine.”  And they complain: “Since October 7, we have been hearing, almost daily, about the two hundred or so Israeli hostages, of which around a hundred have already been released.”"

Gwyneth Paltrow tells hostage families ‘I send you my heart’ - "she highlighted the ongoing plight of female hostages, asking, "There are still 17 women being held by Hamas. Where are the feminists?" She accompanied this message with the hashtag "#rapeisnotresistance," drawing attention to the reports of sexual violence against the hostages and raising awareness of victim Shani Louk's story."

Gazans Turn Hamas Gunmen Away From Shelters to Avoid Israeli Airstrikes, Report Reveals - ""We will quickly kick out anyone who has a gun or a rifle out of this school," said one man. Tuesday's report details firsthand accounts of several Gazans who say they are doing everything they can to protect themselves and their families from becoming human shields for Hamas militants. Nasser al-Zaanin, for example, was forced to flee his home in northern Gaza in October, and relocated to a school that had been turned into a shelter in the town of Deir al-Balah, along with his adult sons and grandchildren. When al-Zaanin arrived at the shelter, he helped set up a system of committees to improve life for families who had taken refuge by overseeing the distribution of food, water and medical needs. They also established one hard and fast rule: no armed men allowed in the compound. "All the families agreed," said al-Zaanin, who once worked as a civil servant for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. "We simply want to save all families, women and children and not let there be any potential threat against us because of the existence of police and members of the Hamas government." The report included several similar testimonies from central Gaza, although it also added the caveat that it is not known how widespread the phenomenon is and whether the attitude is the same in other areas of Gaza."
Damn Zionists!

The BBC breached editorial guidelines over 1,500 times in Israel-Hamas conflict, report claims - "the report analyzed four months of BBC output on television, radio, online, podcasts and on social media during the height of the conflict and found a "deeply worrying pattern of bias" against Israel. British lawyer Trevor Asserson and a team of about 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists used artificial intelligence to analyze nine million words from the news outlet, starting the day of the October 7, 2023, terror attack. The researchers allegedly identified 1,553 instances where the BBC violated its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest. The report accuses the BBC of downplaying Hamas terrorism and painting Israel as the aggressor in dozens of instances. Israel was associated with "war crimes" four times more frequently than Hamas (127 vs. 30); genocide 14 times more often (283 vs. 19), and breaching international law six times more often than Hamas (167 vs. 27). BBC reporters who had shown hostility toward Israel on social media were also featured in the network's war coverage, the report claimed. Researchers reportedly found 11 instances on the BBC's Arabic channel, where it featured reporters who had previously made public statements in support of terrorism and Hamas. "The findings reveal a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth," the report said"
This doesn't stop terrorist supporters complaining, because to them anything short of celebrating terrorism is unacceptable anti-Palestinian speech

BBC Chair denies plea from 200 Jewish staffers calling for formal probe into antisemitism at the newsroom - "The group detailed their "anguish and disbelief because we fear we have now exhausted the process of raising our very serious concerns about anti-Jewish racism with BBC Management"... The group provided the board with a list of "impartiality breaches in matters of public controversy relating to Israel and Gaza," broadcast errors that they say "suggest bias" and personal details "of the fear and mental health toll on Jewish BBC staff, their feelings of isolation and alienation from their bosses and experiences of prejudice and racism at work," according to Deadline. They say there have been blatant breaches of the BBC’s social media guidelines without sufficient discipline... The letter cited social media posts from Dr. Asif Munaf, "Match Of The Day" host Gary Lineker, and BBC Arabic staff and others... BBC director-general Tim Davie said in March that some tweets by BBC Arabic staff were "unacceptable," and said that the broadcaster was "acting fairly and judiciously," JewishNewsUK reported. The BBC has been plagued with embarrassing gaffes, apologies and corrections related to the Israel-Hamas war, prompting critics to dismiss the corporation as simply too "woke" to accurately cover the conflict. In January, the BBC was forced to apologize for airing an unverified December radio report that accused Israel Defense Forces troops of executing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Much of their coverage has raised eyebrows with inaccurate reports that erred on behalf of Hamas and Palestinians. In November, BBC News Channel aired a report that claimed Israeli forces had descended on Al Shifa hospital in Gaza and targeted "medical teams and Arab speakers" inside. While reports did indicate the IDF had entered the hospital, none corroborated the claim that soldiers had targeted those inside. The error led the BBC to issue an on-air apology, retraction and a written statement. Following Hamas' invasion of Israel on October 7, the BBC repeatedly referred to the organization as "freedom fighters," "gunmen" or "militants" rather than terrorists. As the situation escalated into a war, viewers became increasingly frustrated with the news organization's refusal to use the term "terrorists," particularly after reports of Hamas' brutal actions against civilians."
Good luck if you deny 200 Muslim staffers' demands for a probe into Islamophobia

World reacts to UN vote calling on Israel to end Palestinian occupation - "The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories within a year and the imposition of sanctions for non-compliance."
Withdrawing from Gaza led to October 7th, so good luck with that

The world must admit the two-state solution is dead - "Even many Israeli peaceniks living in the Gaza envelope who dreamt of coexistence are changing their politics. The reason is simple: they are loath to reward terror. Part of the problem is that the two-state solution isn’t actually a solution — it’s a catch-phrase. It’s neither a proposal for reconciliation nor a path toward peace. Presuming the only thing standing in the way of peace was land, three decades ago, Israel took the world’s advice and began giving land away — for peace. Yet if the “land for peace” theory had any merit, terrorism coming from Judea and Samaria (a.k.a., the West Bank) should have decreased after Israel ceded Areas A and B to the Palestinian Authority 30 years ago, as part of the Oslo Accords. It didn’t. Terrorism should have shrunk after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Very much the contrary. “Land for peace” thus became a meaningless slogan (or perhaps a clever marketing term). Israel’s concessions didn’t even lead to an uneasy peace, only to more death and destruction. From the get-go, “land for peace” was flawed to its core, as it was premised on the notion that the onus is on Israel to sacrifice for peace — the corollary being that if Israel didn’t make concessions, it didn’t truly want peace. This rationale presupposes that the land didn’t belong to Israel in the first place, and infantilizes the Palestinians, who need to be bribed in order to agree to be peaceful. What the world is asking now is that Israel try again, after the worst slaughter of innocents in its history, and not just to dip its toe in the water, but to give the entire house away. Israel has tried “land for peace” so many times. Perhaps, for once, the world should try placing the burden on Palestinian leaders by forcing them to clean up their act, in exchange for concessions from Israel. Perhaps it’s time to flip the script to “peace for land.” And what, precisely, would Israel want to see, besides the obvious clamp down on terror attacks? For starters, there’s a niggling problem of incitement and widespread hate. After the Second World War, Germans had a day of reckoning, a moment of judgment and accountability, where actions were evaluated and consequences were faced. They went through a process of denazification, where Nazi ideology was speedily scrubbed from the country’s discourse and replaced with western values. What we need today is a similar process to scrub antisemitism from Palestinian society. From the cradle to the grave, Palestinians are inundated with hatred that rivals Nazi Germany’s vilest antisemitism. They’re taught that Jews are the cause of every ill in their lives. They’re taught that Jews are mosquitoes, to be killed with impunity. Children are brainwashed and propagandized to believe that their greatest and most heroic duty is to kill Jews. If you don’t believe me, spend time surfing the vast media library compiled by Palestinian Media Watch, which has been tracking this material for decades. One might retort that there is plenty of hate coming from extremists in Israel. True enough. But they are the exceptions, not the rule, and they are marginalized within Israeli society. One might also argue that we should expect this level of hatred from the Palestinians given the conditions they live in. But this presupposes that the extremists and corrupt Palestinian leadership haven’t villainized the Jews to deflect attention away from their own failures. And it takes agency away from Palestinian leaders who have consistently chosen war over economic advancement. Nor has preaching hatred helped their case. Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan have all made peace with Israel, because the alternative wasn’t worth it and the benefits were vast... three-quarters of Palestinians support the October 7 attacks. And therein lies the crux of the problem: peace cannot be had when one side wants to kill the other. No land bribes are going to appease the religious extremists. It will only result in more attacks on Israel. It’s a lie to say the Palestinians’ “armed struggle” and “resistance” is about land. This is the narrative for useful idiots and naive westerners. This conflict is unmistakably religious and ideological. After all, whenever terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered civilians — including on October 7 — they were screaming “Allahu akbar!” (Allah is great), not “Free Palestine.” The terrorist groups chiefly responsible for the October 7 massacre were Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which is an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas’s leaders readily admit that the entire point is to destroy Israel and kill Jews — it’s right there in its charter. And it is no coincidence that Hamas named the operation the Al-Aqsa Flood — a reference to Islam’s third-holiest site. (Can anyone even name Judaism’s third-holiest site?) In the lead-in to the one-year anniversary of the October 7 massacre, the two-state delusion is alive and well. Once upon a time, one could hope that the two sides could sit down and come to some sort of a deal. But giving it another go would be the very definition of insanity — i.e., doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And given the new reality, it would also be the definition of suicide."

Experts warn Iran, others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada - "Marcus Kolga founded DisinfoWatch in 2007 to monitor and expose state-sponsored attempts to hijack social media for malicious intents. Since the Hamas invasion of Israel last October, he’s seen a spike in such activity. “Over the past nine months at DisinfoWatch, we’ve observed social media accounts that were previously posting aggressively anti-Ukrainian content, adding anti-Zionist content to their toxic mix,” Kolga told the National Post in an email. “We also know that Russian intelligence has been sponsoring antisemitic active measures and influence operations.” There have been reports of foreign governments sowing divisions in the West in the wake of the wars in Ukraine and Israel. The U.S. director of national intelligence issued an official statement in July warning that the Islamic Republic of Iran was boosting anti-Israel protests online, and, five months earlier, France accused Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB — of a secret campaign to graffiti Paris with Jewish stars to plant fears of antisemitism... 60 per cent of anti-Israel social media posts concerning McGill were posted by fake accounts. By comparison, the company found 75 per cent of commentators critical of the encampment were authentic users... “The hashtag campaigns we’ve analyzed, such as #FreePalestine, are often inauthentic, driven by coordinated inauthentic behaviour. Our findings consistently confirm this trend, which is why these analyses are crucial.” This squares with the Islamic republic’s decades–long campaign to infiltrate democracies, said Michael Bonner, a historian of ancient Iran and senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. “Iranian intelligence now targets Western domestic cultural and political weaknesses and inflames them, as we saw in recent protests”... NCRI revealed that the Chinese government was instrumental in promoting anti-Israel protests in the U.S., “mobilizing frequent demonstrations as well as gradually escalating direct-action campaigns targeting critical infrastructure and public spaces.” The report, which highlighted the involvement of groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) in the Chinese network, drew the condemnation of senior American political leaders."
Ironic, given that the left always dismisses those who disagree as "bots"

Meme - Steve McGuire @sfmcguire79: "Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway on why he's stepping down: "I don't want to be in an environment where I need, where my family needs, protection. That's the part I didn't bargain for.""
"Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway to resign from $1M-a-year job over toxic campus environment: 'The part didn't bargain for'"
JL Sherman @jsherman39: "Imagine how Jewish students feel at Rutgers."

Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 on X - "NYC, Sept. 20 — Shellyne Rodriguez, the far-left academic who put a machete to the throat of a NYPost reporter last year, lead a crowd outside the Brooklyn Museum in chanting: “Our ancestors dreamed of us, slitting the masters throat.” Video by @L2FTV:"
Art instructor who threatened journalist with machete chants about ‘slitting the master’s throat’ - "Rodriguez was fired from Hunter College in 2023 after tussling up a pro-life student table and later threatening a journalist and his photographer with a machete... earlier this year, Rodriguez lost another teaching job at the Cooper Union after making anti-Israel comments...   In a post on her personal Instagram page, Rodriguez described former Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. as a “dirty f—ing roach” and “a Zionist lapdog,” the New York Post reported.  Rodriguez also urged a rent strike against Jewish landlords and people who support Israel during a CUNY for Palestine virtual panel... she urged people to target individuals who support Israel, saying, “Find them, go to their offices, don’t let them sleep,” according to the blog.  However, Rodriguez blamed her firing on “fascism” in an email to students, according to an Instagram post by the Cooper Union Students for Justice in Palestine chapter."